Wild Coast Sardine Run

Days here are long and mostly spent looking. Boats leave at first light, push out through the surf or the river-mouth bar, then run the coastline for hours while the crew reads the surface: circling gannets, a slick of scales and oil, dolphins moving with purpose. Skippers trade positions over the radio and some operators keep a spotter aircraft up. When something is found the call comes fast, and everyone is expected to be kitted, sitting on the tube and over the side within seconds of the engines cutting.

Once you are in the water there is nothing to navigate by. The continental shelf runs close in along this coast, so deep water sits a short distance off the beach, and the shoals push north inside a narrow band of cool water. Dives are shallow, rarely past 20 m, short and improvised, because you go where the fish are going rather than to a briefed plan, and the water shifts hour to hour from green and grainy to open blue.

The set piece is a baitball, sardines packed into a turning sphere that gets whittled from every side at once. Most of it is watched on a breath-hold: bubbles and a slow descent cost you the action, so snorkellers often see more than divers, and scuba is saved for slower encounters. Sound carries much of it, and Cape gannets folding up and hitting the water at speed are audible well before anything comes into view.

It suits people who can spend a week on the water and accept coming home empty on several of those days. Fitness counts for more than logged dives: repeated entries from a moving boat, water in the high teens and hours of open swell wear down anyone prone to seasickness. Photographers should arrive rigged for wide angle. If you want a briefed reef and a guaranteed species list, this is the wrong trip; if you want to watch the ocean feed, book a block of days and stay flexible.